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Part of
Conspiracy Theory Discourses
Edited by Massimiliano Demata, Virginia Zorzi and Angela Zottola
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 98] 2022
► pp. 319–342

Chapter 14
Expressing stance towards COVID-19 conspiracy theories in Macedonian online forum discussions

 | AUE-FON University
 | Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje
This chapter examines how stancetaking strategies aid advocacy and refutation of prevalent COVID-19 related conspiracy theories on two Macedonian internet discussion fora. The socio-political background and the content of detected conspiracy theories debated in the forum threads are briefly discussed. The authors explore affective, epistemic and interpersonal positioning in posts by three groups of social actors: conspiracy theory proponents, conspiracy theory opponents and a group of undecided. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of selected discussion sequences the chapter draws attention to dominant patterns of stancetaking in conspiracy theory argumentation.
Keywords: stancetaking, internet discussion fora, conspiracy theories, COVID-19
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Related work
  • 3.Socio-cultural background
  • 4.Data and research procedure
  • 5.Stance dimensions analysis
    • 5.1Affect
      • 5.1.1Results
      • 5.1.2Discussion
    • 5.2Investment
      • 5.2.1Results
      • 5.2.2Discussion
    • 5.3Alignment
      • 5.3.1Results
      • 5.3.2Discussion
  • 6.Summary and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.98.14mit
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